Runaway Bay

If you’re unemployed, what do you do if you keep sending your resumé in response to job advertisements and not only don’t get an interview, but not even the courtesy of a reply?

That was a question one of the participants asked at a recent author

Runaway Bay Gold Coast Queensland

event I was invited to present at the library at the intriguingly named Runaway Bay on Queensland’s Gold Coast as part of the city’s impressive program for over 50s.

Another of the large and lively group at the event asked my opinion on how one registered training organisation could be offering an accredited training course for A$45, when others were asking A$2000 for the same course.

As you can appreciate from those two questions, it was an interesting and interested group, and I thoroughly enjoyed the interaction with them as I talked about my e-book, Extending your use-by date. And I tried my best to respond individually and personally to those questions from my own knowledge and experience.

My main message in that book is that we need to accentuate the positive as we grow older, because older people are capable of much more than many people think they are, including older people themselves. Older people need to fight age stereotypes and discrimination, and they need to back themselves, while at the same time being realistic about their capabilities and chances of (re-)employment. But we need to keep chipping away at the ageist attitudes that exist so that people can continue working into older age if they want to, and find stimulating and rewarding work, including as volunteers.

The invitation to speak at Runaway Bay Library came from Rochelle Smith, the Program Development Office for the City of Gold Coast Library Service. I was grateful for the support and positive feedback on the day from Chris Taylor, the Senior Librarian at Runaway Bay.

Dick SmithAO Entrepeneur & Aviator

Dick Smith

One well-known Australian who keeps extending his use-by date is Dick Smith, AO. Born in 1944, Dick is a very successful Australian entrepreneur, businessman, and aviator. I had heard he was going to Italy to check out the crash site of Bert Hinkler, the pioneer aviator who is the subject of my recent book, Hustling Hinkler, so I sent him a copy. It turns out he’d already bought one, and told me it was a ‘fantastic book, totally absorbing’. Coming from someone who himself could be described as a trailblazer, and who followed part of Hinkler’s 1933 record-breaking flight route to Australia in a round-the world-helicopter flight, that’s a very gratifying and generous response.

Whispers

Thanks to the Queensland Writers’ Centre, I had the opportunity one recent Saturday afternoon to do a short reading from Hustling Hinkler, as part of QWC’s monthly Whispers program. My fellow authors were: Edwina Shaw, Nicola Alter, Adair Jones, and Inga Simpson, and all of us are ‘graduates’ of the QWC/ Hachette Manuscript Development Program, an annual event that attracts applicants from across the country.

Whispers takes place at the Library Café, which is a sheltered outdoor venue, open to the public. So we did our readings to a somewhat mobile audience, some of whom are long-time followers of the Whispers program, some of whom turned up just for the day, and some who thought they were just sitting down with a quiet cup of coffee when a book reading broke out. Good fun, and great to hear those talented writers read from their own work.

From left: Nicola Alter, Darryl Dymock, Inga Simpson, Adair Jones, Edwina Shaw

If you had a choice, which author from anywhere in the world would you like to hear read an extract, and from which book?